James Beaumont Neilson

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James Beaumont Neilson (1792-1865)

James Beaumont Neilson (born June 22, 1792 in Shettleston , Glasgow , † January 18, 1865 in Queenshill , Kirkcudbright ) was a Scottish director of the Glasgow gas company and inventor of the first heater for blast furnaces .

Education and career

Neilson was born in Shettleston near Glasgow in 1792, the youngest of seven children of mine operator Walter Neilson and his wife Marion Smith. His middle name Beaumont goes back to the wife of the mine owner, for whom his mother worked as a maid.

At the age of 14, Neilson was also employed in the mine as an errand boy, but two years later began an apprenticeship with his older brother John, who owned a workshop and a foundry . During his spare time he did private studies to improve his level of education.

1814 Neilson operating engineer in the coal mine of Irvine and constructed there among other things, a horse-drawn railway , so that the extracted coal could be transported directly from the mine to the port. The following year he married his first wife Barbara Montgomerie (1795-1843) and moved with her to Glasgow after his dismissal due to financial difficulties of his previous employer. Neilson hoped to find new employment and better opportunities for further education there.

In the gas company, which was newly founded in 1813 and responsible for gas lighting in Glasgow, Neilson finally had success in 1817 and was able to prevail over twenty competitors when applying for a position as operations manager despite a lack of practical experience. Within five years he was able to make up for his lack of experience in his new area of ​​work and rise to the position of Operations Director. During his thirty years with the company, he made many improvements in gas lighting through numerous inventions.

In 1821, Neilson founded a Workmen's Institution , as he knew the importance of good training through his own experience. After initially there was still little interest, the facility was quickly accepted. Just four years later, Neilson's Workers' Training College was expanded and, in addition to larger workrooms, also had a laboratory.

Inventions for preheating the fan wind of blast furnaces

Twin tubular heater
Lift-tube or trouser-tube heater (also Calder apparatus)

Neilson first came into contact with blast furnace technology for iron production around 1824 when a smelter asked whether the required fan air could not be cleaned in a similar way to coal gas. After a corresponding examination, however, he found that it was not the assumed sulfur content, but the lower air pressure and the increased humidity that was the cause of the poor oven performance in summer. However, his suggestion to dry the air before entering the fan was ignored.

Another request from the owner of Muirkirker Eisenwerke to improve the performance of a fan 800 meters from the blast furnace gave Neilson the idea of ​​expanding the fan air by heating it and thus making it possibly more effective. He then carried out experiments in which heated air made a luminous gas flame shine more intensely and intensified a forge fire. The test results supported his thesis. However, many smelters shied away from the risk of making changes to well-functioning stoves, since if it deteriorated, it could take many weeks before a stove went "normal" again. In addition, there was the previous practical experience that blast furnaces ran better in winter than in summer. It was assumed that the wind had to be as cold as possible, which was in stark contrast to Neilson's idea.

Only at the Clyde Iron Works did they agree to a first attempt with preheated wind air in 1828, in which only a short piece of wind pipe was heated to around 27 ° C with a coal fire. The experiment was nevertheless successful, as the slag produced was visibly thinner and poorer in iron despite the slight increase in temperature. Even if this attempt still failed to convince the dubious smelter, Neilson submitted his invention of the "use of heated air in all kinds of incineration plants" to the patent office . The patent was granted on September 11, 1828 under No. 5701. However, since he lacked the necessary financial means to exploit the patent, he shared it with Charles Mac Intosch and Colin Dunlop from the Clyde Iron Works and John Wilson from Dundyvan. In an effort to make the invention available to as many smelter owners as possible, the patent holders only charged a small fee of one shilling per tonne of pig iron.

Neilson's next invention in 1829 was a longer and arched piece of wind pipe that was heated over a grate fire and encased in a cast iron box that was open at the top. This first real wind heater had a heating surface of 6.5 m² and was able to heat the fan wind to around 93 ° C. The disadvantage, however, was the low heat resistance of the box, which burned through despite the still low temperature of the wind. Neilson replaced the box with a cylindrical vault, which was not only more stable, but could also hold the heat better and raised the wind temperature to 138 ° C. By increasing the cross-section of the line and lengthening the line, Neilson succeeded once again in increasing the performance of his "tubular heater". With a heating surface of 44.6 m², the wind temperature could be increased to a maximum of 315 ° C.

However, what turned out to be disadvantageous with the tubular coil heaters was the uneven thermal expansion, which led to cracks and leaks. Neilson first tried in 1832 to distribute the task of heating the wind to several smaller tubular wind heaters, which were arranged around the blast furnace so that each blow mold had its own wind heater. To keep the heat out longer, the main supply lines and the so-called "twin tube apparatus" were roofed over with a brick vault. Despite the smaller heating surface of each individual heater of 14 m², the twin tube apparatus achieved almost the same output as the simple tube heater with a generated wind temperature of 300 ° C. However, this did not solve the problem of the tightness of the system either. In addition, the high flow resistance caused by the rough inner surfaces of the cast-iron pipes and lines caused a high pressure loss, which greatly reduced the wind pressure, and the workers working on the blast furnace complained about the unbearable heat.

Neilson's last further development, realized in the so-called "lifting tube apparatus" or "trouser tube apparatus", was intended to compensate for the disadvantages due to the thermal stresses with elongated windpipes that converted the previous semicircular shape into a U-shape. Since this heater was first used in the Calder ironworks, it is also referred to as the "Calder apparatus" in various sources.

Conspiracy against Neilson

Despite the overall very successful improvement in smelting technology through the introduction of hot air heaters, many smelter owners tried to oppose the levy of license fees. They agreed among themselves not to recognize the patent despite the threat of fines of up to £ 1,000. After all, the patent owners had no choice but to enforce their rights.

The first lawsuit against the Houshold Coal and Iron Co. in 1841 was successful and a year later resulted in a claim for damages of £ 3,000. Another lawsuit against Alexander Baird, the tenant of a blast furnace plant founded in Gartsherrie ( North Lanarkshire ) in 1830 , caused a considerable stir due to the number of witnesses invited and the enormous legal costs, but also helped in retrospect, the resistance of the ironworkers to the recognition of Neilsons Breaking benefits and entitlements. A total of 102 experts were heard, and finally Baird had to admit that in 10 years of operation since the introduction of wind heating, he had made a profit of £ 260,000 on a pig iron production of 96,000 tons in 1848. Nevertheless, the highest court in Edinburgh pronounced the patent holders instead of the claimed £ 20,000 only to be awarded £ 12,000 in compensation. The litigation costs, however, were estimated at £ 40,000.

Retirement and death

Neilson Memorial on Barstobrick Hill

After the successful patent lawsuits secured Neilson's income and this rose from 3 ⁄ 10 to 6 ⁄ 10 of profits after Dunlop left , he retired from business in 1847 and sat down with his second wife Jane Gemmel († before 1865) in 1853, who he had married in 1846, to rest on his private estate in Queenshill. Until his death, however, Neilson always tried to ensure a little more prosperity in his new adopted home. In addition to improving agricultural machinery and expanding the railroad, he set up a workers' training institution in the parish of Queenshill, similar to that in Glasgow.

When he died in 1865, he left behind a large family with 11 children from his first marriage and four grandchildren. His eldest son Walter Montgomerie Neilson (1819-1889) took over the factory for the manufacture of locomotives Neilson and Company in Glasgow, founded by his brother William Neilson in 1836, and in 1883 had a pyramid-shaped memorial built on Barstobrick Hill in honor of his father.

Other inventions (extract)

  • Replacement of the cast iron degassing retorts with clay vessels
  • Improvement of the self-cleaning of luminous gas through the use of iron (II) sulfate (iron vitriol) and lime
  • Use of charcoal as a tar and oil separator to avoid tar mist during operation
  • Invention of the dovetail burner (English: swallow-tail burner )

Honors

literature

  • Otto Johannsen (on behalf of the Association of German Ironworkers): History of the iron . 3. Edition. Verlag Stahleisen mbH, Düsseldorf 1953, p. 322-328 .
  • H. Dickmann: A Hundred Years of Cowper Wind Heating . Ed .: Brohltal AG for stone and clay industry. Development of blast furnace heating up to the invention of EA Cowpers. Burgbrohl 1958, p. 1-4 .
  • Thomas Brown Mackenzie: Life of James Beaumont Neilson. West of Scotland Iron and Steel Institute, Glasgow 1928 ( books.google.de ).
  • Samuel Smiles: Industrial biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers. London 1905, p. 149 ff.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Glasgow Digital Library - Memoirs and portraits of one hundred Glasgow men: James Beaumont Neilson
  2. ↑ a b c d genealogy.com - family tree of James Beaumont Neilson (birthday of James Beaumont Neilson does not match the other sources!)
personal data
SURNAME Neilson, James Beaumont
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish entrepreneur and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1792
PLACE OF BIRTH Shettleston , Glasgow
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 1865
Place of death Queenshill , Kirkcudbright